


Memory

by whichstiel



Series: Season 13 Codas [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dreams, Episode: s13e03 Patience, Gen, Post-Episode: s13e03 Patience, Psychic Abilities, Visions, episode coda, spn 13x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 14:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12534176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Patience uses the brooch to explore a memory of her grandmother.





	Memory

Patience rolls her fingers around her grandmother’s costume jewelry, enjoying the feeling of the smooth scrolled metal on her skin. The stone in the brooch is warm, probably from her own touch although Patience likes to imagine that it was freshly plucked from her grandmother’s palm. She clenches her hand around the brooch and closes her eyes. After one slow breath, then another, her mind settles. She walks into the vision.

She’s at her grandmother’s front door and it’s made out of light. Patience walks through the glowing veil and sees her grandmother through the doorway that leads to the kitchen. She’s humming and there’s a gentle clattering that tells Patience she’s probably cooking over the stove. Patience takes a long, slow breath in. Oh yes. It smells like roasting meat - maybe chicken or turkey. Pumpkin pie has filled the house with sweet spice. And she remembers this day now. Her father had dropped her off so he could go back home and take care of her mom. It was Thanksgiving, and she was here to help her grandmother make dinner so her mother could stay home and rest.

She walks into the kitchen and Missouri’s face breaks into a grin. “Sweetheart,” she says, pointing a cream-covered spatula at the lime green Formica counter which has ingredients for cranberry salad lined up neatly next to a wide bowl. “I got everything set out for you. I want you to whip that up quick and then you can help me with the sweet potatoes.” Patience climbs up onto a low white stool her grandmother placed next the counter. The counter seems to have risen with her and she looks down at the cranberries, apples, and oranges laid out and smiles at her hands which are both large and childishly small at the same time.

They work in companionable silence for a few minutes before her grandmother begins to hum something low. Patience recognizes it as “You are my sunshine,” and she begins to sing along in a high, clear voice. When they reach the last stanza, melancholy has settled over her shoulders and she feels herself droop over her task as the last words rattle over her. _Please don’t take my sunshine away_. “Grandma?’ She asks quietly. “Did you see anything new?”

Missouri, who had been whipping a whisk around her bowl of cream like a tornado, stops and sets the whisk down with a click. “No honey,” she says in a gentle tone that wraps around Patience like a warm blanket. “Nothing new.”

“But you’d tell me, right? If there was?”

Missouri looks away. “Of course, baby.” She points back at the counter. “Best get to it.”

Patience bends once again to finely chopping apples, then puts a cupful of ground cranberries and pulled apart orange pieces into the bowl. She dumps sugar over the salad and stares for a while at the mix of orange, and blood red. White sugar covers it all like a shroud and a word springs to mind that she didn’t know at that age: funereal. This would be her mother’s last Thanksgiving. Portents seem to appear everywhere and it hurts like a knife wound to see them now.

“Baby,” Missouri says, interrupting her moody silence. “Can you get me the—” She snaps her fingers and Patience turns around, bemused. “Get me the—” Missouri’s face screws up into an expression of irritation. “Oh, I can’t remember. The— The thing.”

Patience laughs. It’s not like her grandmother to forget anything…ever. Still she watches Missouri flounder and scrambles to help her. She’s probably talking about her blue plastic spoon - the one with the cartoon elephant on the handle. It’s an odd thing, Patience considers, since her grandmother prefers to pull out the nicer servingware for holidays. But certainty floods Patience as she watches her grandmother hem and haw. _The blue elephant spoon._ She hops down and crosses the kitchen, leaning around Missouri to pull open the drawer where she keeps the kitchen utensils. Patience pulls it open and winces as it squeals on its rollers. The blue elephant spoon is shoved near the back of the drawer, rarely used, and Patience pulls it out and hands it to her grandmother. “This?” she asks.

Missouri smiles but there’s something almost cool and calculating as she takes the spoon from Patience and shoos her back to her task at the counter.

Suddenly Patience is separated from her younger self and she stands off to the side, her arms pulled tightly around her waist. She watches her younger self begin to chatter happily about school while Missouri whips her sweet cream and watches her with puzzlement and worry etched deeply across the lines of her face.

“You knew,” Patience whispers. “You knew all this time and you never told me. You never trained me or taught me a…a damn thing about my gift.” Her voice breaks. “And you lied. About Momma. You lied to me and to Daddy and it broke us all apart.” She feels a hot tear slip down her face and makes a face at it, assailed with the vague feeling that she should be able to control these reactions. It’s her vision, after all.

“I’m sorry, baby.” Missouri’s high voice sounds from behind Patience, like she knew it would.

Patience refuses to turn around. “So what? You die and now you get to go full Obi Wan on me? You being dead doesn’t help a thing.” She shuffles her foot along the linoleum floor and her fingers dig into her sides. “It’s not fair.”

“I’m not really here,” Missouri reminds her gently. “These are memories. Now, in this place, I’m just the part of you that—” She breaks off and a warm hand slides up onto her shoulder. “I’m the part of you that knows you’ve got to train. You’ve got to work at this gift. Because—”

“Because I’m alone in this,” Patience finishes bitterly.

“No sweetie. You got to train the same way a child’s got to learn to read and write. It’s to prepare you for what’s to come. You grew up fast when your Momma died and it broke our hearts. Now you got to do it again. It’ll hurt. It’ll be hard. But you got to be ready.” She pats Patience’s shoulder again and it’s both a benediction and an order.

Patience closes her eyes and opens them again on the salad on the counter. She’s her younger self again, swamped with pride at guessing correctly what her grandmother had wanted. She stirs the white sugar into the cranberry salad, turning it a uniformly pleasing pink. Visiting these old memories has shown her just how much her grandmother prodded her burgeoning abilities during her childhood. Why she’d never told her is beyond Patience’s comprehension. Sometimes she wonders if her grandmother really did see her mother living, or if she saw a long, twisting future for Patience that began with her mother’s death, their long estrangement, and then her own death at the hands of that wraith. The future and past are a twisting maze of guesswork. It knots Patience up inside.

Missouri begins to sing about “skies of blue and red roses too” and Patience sighs to hear it. These visions do more than teach her about her gift. They also remind her of her grandmother’s love. Patience burrows into the moment, the horror that’s been visiting her in her dreams pushed away under the force of the fluting melody of her grandmother’s song.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


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